North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring. And as a leader, it's your job to deliver. But where do you focus?

Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy? We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose.

I'm Lindsay Pedersen, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast. Let's get to it. Today, I am really happy to be joined by Erika Shaffer.

Erika heads strategic communications at Madrona Venture Group. Erika, welcome to the show.

Erika Shaffer

Thanks for having me, Lindsay.

Lindsay Pedersen

I'm so glad to see you. Okay, Erika, to start us off, what is your favorite thing about what you do?

Erika Shaffer

My favorite thing easily is when I get to work with founders who come to Madrona, we give them funding, and then I get to like help them tell their story. And what I love about it is every founder is so passionate about what they are talking about, what they're building, and helping them translate that into something that the outside world cares about. And sometimes that's like super easy, and sometimes it really just isn't, because it's so deep in the weeds of enterprise technology.

It's like, how is this actually going to impact people? And where is it different? Like, why should somebody pay attention to it?

So, figuring all those parts out across a very broad set of technologies is really a wonderful task to have. The other favorite thing, so actually I have two favorite things. The other favorite thing is I love working with the media.

You know, I feel like just as I wouldn't say every single reporter is as passionate about their job as a founder is about building a company, but everybody has a job to do, and they, as a reporter, they're all about relationships. So, they want to understand kind of like what I can offer them, and I want to understand what I can offer them. How can I make their job easier and serve the goals of Madrona, but also of our founders?

So, I love making those matches between the founders and the reporters, because that's the most important connection. It's not me to the reporter, it's not me to the founder, it's the founder to the people that need to understand and hear his or her story.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, so I hear there's this really deep value for relationship connection, almost matchmaking, and also that you have this very broad variety of companies, all of whom you get to help kind of craft with them or draw out from them what's going to be the story that connects with people outside of their circle.

Erika Shaffer

Yeah, and when they're so early, it's often the initial strategy, and I really admire the work that you do, where it's more once you've figured out a little more about your company and more than seed funding, where you are like, okay, here is my customer, and here's where I want to be in the market. Now it's not just an idea, it's that I know I can get there, and I need to build a presence, and that's that brand work that you do starts at the beginning, but it really has to get formed over a period of time.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh yeah, it's in those early days, you're a heat-seeking missile, and so you don't want a ton of rigor around what the story is so early when you're still identifying where the heat is.

Erika Shaffer

Right, for many startups, as important is the origin story. Why are you, out of all these other startups in this general space, going to solve this problem, and why are you perfect for it? I was listening to some other podcasts where they were talking about YC, and they have hundreds of little startups who've gone through there, and everybody has to have a reason why they are the only person to solve this problem, which you know is not really the case, like that there's no way that that's actually a reality.

There can't be that many companies, but for everybody to strive to kind of have that story of, I had this pain, and I realized there was this solution I could create, or like the co-founder meeting stories, those are really wonderful too, because it's a lot of our companies do have co-founders versus just one founder. It's important to have a partner when you're building a company and working so hard, but all those stories just bring more depth to what you're doing, and to the story that you can tell externally, and to potential employees too.

Lindsay Pedersen

Makes it so human, and you have taught me a lot about storytelling, and especially storytelling in the context of a fledgling company with few resources. Talk to me about the usefulness of story itself, story in these early stages of building awareness, drawing in employees, drawing in investors. Why story?

Why is story so helpful?

Erika Shaffer

It gets you beyond, like here's my product that I'm building, and it pulls people in. There's always like those core story elements, like I learned about them in ninth grade, which is, you know, the conflict, and the apex, and the denouement, all those different things, and you can kind of try to fit your story into that, but I just feel like you need a structure, and the structure is not, here's my product. The structure is, here's why we are here, and I do think that really also helps as you're building your employee base, so that people understand, this is like why we're here, this is what we're going towards, this is where we came from, so I just feel like it is this core thing that people can connect to, basically.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's like there's something in the person, the audience, whether it's a potential employee, or an investor, or the media, there's something in them that gets disarmed by story in a way that product description and facts just can't accomplish. Exactly. There's something about that.

When you think about, and when you advise founders with their communication, how do you advise them? What are the things that you're really coaching them as you're helping them craft the story, and then helping them, you know, build the megaphone to share the story? What are the things, the key themes of your advice?

Erika Shaffer

Well, I used to think, one, we shouldn't focus on the press release, we can like write this messaging doc, and that's where we should focus. And I tried that for many, many years, but the reality is, when you write a press release, people really focus on the words, which is so important.

The words are actually very important.

So, what I do is I kind of help them write the press release. We figure out what to put in there and what not to put in there. Some of it is like, you don't want to put in certain things about your company at this point, or whatever.

But some of it is, it's color that you want to give in a one-on-one interview. And then we talk about the interviews that they're going to do with media, and how are you going to approach telling the story. And it's not usually pulling up a PowerPoint presentation that you give to, like that's been a little bit changed from the one that you use to get your funding.

It's more of a personal relationship that you're creating with this reporter. So, you need to understand them, and you need to tell them your story. And it really should start with, here's where I see the market, or here's why I did this.

Figure out what they need to hear to make it fit into their world. And then tune what you need to get across to that audience. Because I think that's another thing that founders can like basically take advantage of.

So, everybody's writing about AI now. And I imagine if somebody listens to this in a year, they'll still be writing about AI. But what are you doing, that's different?

And how do you add on to kind of a theme that is happening right now in the media? So, kind of tuning your story that way. The thing that is also very important is that the founder is the chief storyteller of the company.

And they have to be really confident in that story. And then they need to build the relationships directly with the people that are going to help them tell that story. And that's what is so important.

Because that's what reporters want. They want to talk to the person who is building this brand new thing.

Lindsay Pedersen

Ah, I was going to ask you that because these founders are lucky enough to have your advice. Are they also working with other partners like PR agencies, media relations, people who help that?

Like, what's the balance of doing it themselves versus arming themselves with experts who can help them?

Where's that line?

Erika Shaffer

Well, at the early stages, usually I'm the only person helping them. And sometimes in areas where it's like a very specific industry, they would have some help too. But PR firms usually come into the story much later.

I have actually never really seen it work very well for a seed founder to have a PR firm.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, interesting. Why is that?

Erika Shaffer

What's the dynamic? Well, one, it's expensive. And kind of one, who you can afford as a seed person, as a seed company, is probably not the senior person that you really actually need who has some of these relationships.

And then if you go to a big firm, then you're such a small fish in that pond that it's not really important for the people that you really want to have work on your account. And it is a lot of work.

Just because you hire a PR firm does not mean you can just kind of wash your hands of it.

It is a lot of work to get all that stuff together and have it work, have it be reflective of what you want to say. But the way that I work and the way that I would assume most kind of interested parties, I work very collaboratively with either people who are at the company or if they have brought on a PR firm, I can always, you know, I always kind of like liaise with them and we compare notes. And so, I'm very non-ownership focused, I guess.

I know there's another word I could use there, but I'm not exactly, I can't quite remember what it is.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love this idea. The founder of the CEO is the chief storytelling officer, that there's a point where the leader is really the only one or certainly the best one to be conveying the story that, yeah, I'm thinking like if I were a reporter, I don't want to talk to the PR representative. I want to talk to the executive.

I want to talk to the founder. And so, it really is non-outsourceable for the fact, to some extent, there's something that I imagine even once they're quite a bit farther along and they can have an agency, it's still even really CEOs of really large businesses are still doing that storytelling themselves directly with the media.

Erika Shaffer

Yeah. And then, I mean, there's a whole rule for content that is created that tells the story that where you can control the message. LinkedIn is obviously a massive push for, I would say, 90% of our companies.

So, there are other skills that doesn't necessarily have to be the founder creating that for the company, but the founder should be taking care of their own LinkedIn, for example.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, that's actually, I didn't, I hadn't thought of that. So that LinkedIn presence kind of like from the personal branding, if you will, for the leader, they should own that. Oh, yeah.

Erika Shaffer

And it's hard if people aren't really into LinkedIn or if their market is not necessarily there, but you know, like that consumer thing, possibly not there. But yes, they should, because that's one of the things that we talk about at Madrona is Madrona has a great LinkedIn presence, but founders don't want to connect with Madrona. They want to connect with a specific investor at Madrona who really understands their market, who wants to actually say, I really believe in your company.

I want Madrona to invest in you. So, I think it's got to be a very similar thing. You know, brands on LinkedIn just feel like advertisement.

Whereas people on LinkedIn, if they're authentic and are not just promoting, promoting, promoting, feel authentic. Builds trust. And real discussions are happening there. So that's another area that when we start working with early founders is talking them through like, hey, it's not just like you put out a press release and talk to a couple of reporters.

You have to build a bunch of stuff around that that supports you from all different directions because this is the new world of content.

Lindsay Pedersen

Right. What's the hardest part about communication for a fledgling business? What's the most typically challenging thing about it?

Erika Shaffer

I think it's without somebody to help them, like first know who to reach out to, like where they want it to be. Some of it is understanding how to reach out to reporters, but it really is also the time. You know, people don't, you don't realize like how much time, not the conversation with the reporter takes, but figuring out what do I actually want to say?

I got to write this press release. I got to, it needs to look professional. I need to have quotes in it that everybody approves. I need to get a customer. No, boy, that's like can be really hard that a lot of customers don't want to be in funding press releases.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, like press releases or testimonials or like.

Erika Shaffer

Yeah, they don't want to give a testimonial.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah.

Erika Shaffer

You might be working with somebody who's way down in an organization who isn't approved to talk to the media, so they're not going to be able to say, sure, just put our name in a press release.

That could backfire on them when that press release comes out. So you have to be really careful about all those.

Lindsay Pedersen

I'm thinking like, so for a stage startup, maybe even series A, yeah, having our very kind of carved in stone brand promise and brand strategy, it's kind of too early to do that for a number of reasons we've talked about. At the same time, I imagine, and maybe this is the press release, I imagine there is, especially since time is so scarce for these people, to have sort of a template or an archetype that they come back to, or a set of maybe it's the, this is the problem I was having, this is the solution, but like a framework that they can kind of use and reapply would be helpful.

Is that kind of what the press release does, or is there also some sort of, oh, this is the skeleton anyway of our story as a business? Is that something that you work with them to create?

Erika Shaffer

Yes, definitely. And well, I don't know if I always work with them to create it because they really had to have told that story already. Oh, by the time Madrona, yeah, yeah. They have told the core of that story. And usually, they tell it in a very authentic way because, you know, they're much like you relate to reporters, investors are people. So yes, so they often have that already, but sometimes they're like, oh, I'm not going to talk about that or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, that is a piece of the story that is kind of crucial.

That's why I think in that archetype. And I have done story workshops every now and then with, you know, I had folks come in and do those. And it sometimes is a struggle, you know, for people, which I can kind of understand because it's not like you're telling a myth here.

You know, it's not that complicated. But I think those are really helpful because it's just a new way of thinking about what you're trying to do.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's interesting, too, how the choice of story can and maybe should be guided by who's the audience for this specific scenario, this specific communication occasion. So, for example, oftentimes I'll work with CEOs who actually are very buttoned up on their investor story, maybe their media story. But yeah, this is what investors want to hear.

And by the way, it almost always has the word A.I. in it. But it's actually a bit of a mindset shift to develop a story whose audience is the customer, whether it's B2B or B2C, that what the customer cares about. I'm sure there's overlap with what the investors care about, but it's a different orientation.

So, like what's going to resonate for the customer in a lot of situations is quite different from what will resonate for investors in that both are important. But once there's actual marketing dollars being put behind whatever the message is, it should be dialed into whoever the audience is that you're trying to motivate to be pulled in. So A.I. is in every investor pitch at like basically 100 percent that I see. But A.I. is rarely a really important lead point for a customer.

It's usually like, what are they going to get as a result of that A.I.? So that shift is really interesting, but I think it's a function of the stage of the company. I'm talking to leaders that are far enough along that they're starting to actually spend money on marketing to customer audiences. And that story might be a different story.

Erika Shaffer

Yeah, that's a really good point because it is very true as a customer. I'm always like, how did A.I.? What does that mean? I'd actually recently got a product update from a company that I pay a subscription to, and it was like, and you agree that your information can be used for our A.I. And I sent them a note and I was like, OK, I'm fine with this, but like, how are you? What features are you offering that have A.I. in them? And the amount of customer support required for someone to answer that question was pretty extensive. And then when it came back, I was like, oh, OK, it's like for this thing that hadn't been released yet, why didn't you just say it hasn't been released yet?

It's going to be, you know, something generally in this space. But yeah, I agree that it's not.

Lindsay Pedersen

Well, and you're OK with them using your A.I. I think and a lot of times there's actually an inverse relationship where A.I., you know, investors see dollar signs and efficiency signs. Customers, it's actually the opposite. It's like I want to be treated like a human.

I'm not that interested in reducing your cost structure. And so, it can be not only not additive, but subtractive. And that's like it sort of requires getting into this deep, empathetic to the customer space where the thing that you're so proud of and you've gotten so much reinforcement from investors is actually now it's OK for it to be part of it, but it's not going to be the lead horse or you're really going to lose people's hearts and minds.

Erika Shaffer

Yeah, I think with that one specific thing, it just felt so disingenuous. And I was like, yeah, I'd sprinkle this in here. I'm going to find out.

Lindsay Pedersen

That's actually the whole other additional reason not to do it is like you lose trust. So, the last thing I wanted to ask you about is Madrona Venture Group itself, because you're working with these portfolio companies, but you're also a communicator on behalf of Madrona, the Madrona investors of the Madrona investors. Is there a North Star or a through line that you use to guide your communication decisions on behalf of Madrona Venture Group?

Or is it more ad hoc based on the partner that you're working with?

Erika Shaffer

The through line is always that all of the communication kind of promoting, I guess, our investors is focused on founders. If we're going to write a blog post on, for example, AI agents, besides having a point of view on what's happening broadly in the AI agent market, what does that actually mean for founders? Like, how do we take this knowledge that you have and then say, and what this means is, and part of it is like spelling things out. You know, I think when people write basically essays or position papers or point of view on certain areas of technology, after they've been doing this deep, deep dive into this area of technology, they're like, I can explain it. And then I don't really have to be so deliberate to say, and founders, what this means for you is XYZ. But I think people have gotten a little better at that because when you say this is what you could do, it also says this is what we're looking for.

This is where we think the opportunity is for new companies. And if you're doing this, please come talk to us. But it is also ad hoc because all of these investors are super smart.

They spend a lot of time talking to founders and they understand what the market needs to hear from them. And sometimes they understand that and they just cannot make the time to do it. So, when they do make the time to do it, then I jump on it.

Coral, who works with me, really jumps on it and we do everything we can to get it ready to publish and also really work on the distribution strategy because we're actually working with somebody right now who's helping us kind of have a fresh lens on content. And the distribution strategy is like almost half the work, if not more. Not the content, it's the distribution.

And how do we people read this and understand it and come back to our channels?

Lindsay Pedersen

That's so interesting. Now that I think about it, it's not that surprising. It's just a different nut to crack from the content.

I have learned so much from you, Erica, about story. Thank you for sharing this with my listeners.

Thank you for letting me interview you for my book a number of years ago.

I have a few rapid-fire questions to finish with. One word-ish answers, five of them. Does that sound like something you're up for?

Erika Shaffer

Go for it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. What is your favorite TV show right now?

Erika Shaffer

Somebody Somewhere.

Lindsay Pedersen

Favorite trait in a person?

Erika Shaffer

Honesty.

Lindsay Pedersen

What is your favorite kind of candy?

Erika Shaffer

That one's really hard. I've been thinking about Sees candy lately, so I'll say chocolate-covered walnuts from Sees. Yum.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. Where would you want to live if not in Seattle?

Erika Shaffer

That one is tough. I've always wanted to live in Seattle. And I moved here 30 years ago, and I really can't quite imagine living anywhere else. I would love to have a place on Whidbey, but I would not want to live there full time.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that. So, it's Seattle-centric with a satellite home. Okay. And then lastly, give me a fun fact about you. I guess that's more than one word.

Erika Shaffer

I ride my bike a lot, and that's what I really love to do, is to do multiple days in a row, riding many, many miles. So that's what I spend my vacations doing.

Lindsay Pedersen

Do you bike into work downtown?

Erika Shaffer

Yes. And I bike to work all the time, and I do not live that far from work. And I do have an electric bike for that, that has fenders for the winter. But I have driven before, and it takes me longer to drive the three miles or whatever it is than to ride my bike.

Lindsay Pedersen

So- That's motivating.

Erika Shaffer

Yeah. It's also really nice to have that separation time when you're not listening to the radio, you're not sitting in your warm car in traffic, and it buffers your- a buffer between work and home and between home and work.

Lindsay Pedersen

Erica, this has been great. Thank you so much for joining me. Where should I send people who would like to learn more about you and about MBG?

Erika Shaffer

Well, our website is madrona.com. That is a great place to go. My email is erica at madrona.com, which is Erika with a K. Yeah. We'll put that in the show notes.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay.

Erika Shaffer

Love to hear from you guys. Awesome.

Lindsay Pedersen

Thank you so much. Thanks, Lindsey. Thanks for listening to this episode of North Star Leaders.

Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app. If you know of a North Star Leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com. Also on that website are show notes, transcripts, and a way to sign up for our monthly newsletter.

I hope you join us again for another episode of North Star Leaders.